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Ask HN: Who plays chess?

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Re: Ask HN: Who plays chess?

#11

Post by shazow »

travisjeffery wrote: post #6

I used to play competitive A LOT when I was younger, my best was 3rd place for an all Ontario (Canada) competition and I won some county competitions. But it got to the point of being too time consuming and too boring, all you're doing is memorizing openings and certain strategies for middle play and end game situations rather than playing. Having said that I really enjoy going through the old Master's games. If you'…

Nice, I think I might have played in the same provincial tournament (Ontario). Tied for 2nd in the Intermediate devision when I was in highschool. That particular tournament took place in Trent University.

(I'm shazow on Chess With Friends!)

Re: Ask HN: Who plays chess?

#12

Post by hsmyers »

I've played tournament chess on and off since the mid-70's and as was pointed out elsewhere, to get good you need to devote a substantial amount of time to the game. Not that this is a bad thing, but you do have to ask yourself just how much time you have to devote to just how many things? I've managed to make a decent living from time to time as a chess programmer--- don't do the engines, but did do the interfaces. Starting with John Stanback and Hal Bogner working on Zarkov, and then later working with Electronic Arts for real money! I always got a kick out of the fact that I was the lowest rated player in the project including the manager! The last interface I worked on was for ICC another interesting project...

Re: Ask HN: Who plays chess?

#13

Post by richardw »

I keep Shredder on the iPhone and usually play with that. I go through phases of playing it whenever I have a couple minutes free. I like it because you can keep a game around for a while, only needing to play when you're in the mood.

Re: Ask HN: Who plays chess?

#14

Post by num1 »

travisjeffery wrote: post #6

I used to play competitive A LOT when I was younger, my best was 3rd place for an all Ontario (Canada) competition and I won some county competitions. But it got to the point of being too time consuming and too boring, all you're doing is memorizing openings and certain strategies for middle play and end game situations rather than playing. Having said that I really enjoy going through the old Master's games. If you'…

I had a similar experience. I was a strong contender for the US West amateur championship for a few years. But once I got good enough to spend most of my thinking time on positional concerns things stopped being a game and started being a huge database to memorize. I would spend my free time analyzing my games for weaknesses in my strategy, and practiced speed problem solving using giant books of tactical problems. Everybody serious about chess hits the point of diminishing returns per unit of studying, and I believe that the "good" players are the people who can ignore the impossibility of their task and keep studying anyway. There are probably better solutions to the problem of diminishing returns than quitting cold turkey, (the solution I chose) but I'm convinced my experiences with chess have made me a much better programmer. Looking ahead at the consequences of my actions, being able to look for oddball solutions to impossible situations, never giving up, and occasionally memorizing established solutions are all things I'm appreciative to chess for teaching me.

Re: Ask HN: Who plays chess?

#15

Post by jonbaer »

I have been really playing alot for past 2 months.

First studying alot, basic openings, midgames, endgames, simple tactics. But what got me really hooked was Stockfish (on iOS and Android), http://www.stockfishchess.com ... it is a pretty amazing open source chess engine. By far the best learning has been through http://www.jrobichess.com. His video analysis is great. In general I still lose alot more than I win but the studies are great and there is alot to learn.

Also great documentaries to watch ...

Game Over : Kasparov and the Machine : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLhqmqwy2gw

Susan Polgar : Brilliant Brain http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WREgHsTr5yE

Also watching the current games of Magnus Carlsen, Judit Polgar, and Alexandra Kosteniuk are great.

Re: Ask HN: Who plays chess?

#16

Post by travisjeffery »

num1 wrote: post #14
travisjeffery wrote: post #6

I used to play competitive A LOT when I was younger, my best was 3rd place for an all Ontario (Canada) competition and I won some county competitions. But it got to the point of being too time consuming and too boring, all you're doing is memorizing openings and certain strategies for middle play and end game situations rather than playing. Having said that I really enjoy going through the old Master's games. If you'…

I had a similar experience. I was a strong contender for the US West amateur championship for a few years. But once I got good enough to spend most of my thinking time on positional concerns things stopped being a game and started being a huge database to memorize. I would spend my free time analyzing my games for weaknesses in my strategy, and practiced speed problem solving using giant books of tactical problems. E…

Yeah, basically there's a point where you come to an ultimatum: "Do I want chess to be my life?" and we chose no -- simple as that. And it seems we're both happy we took that path! :)

Re: Ask HN: Who plays chess?

#17

Post by [deleted] »

travisjeffery wrote: post #6

I used to play competitive A LOT when I was younger, my best was 3rd place for an all Ontario (Canada) competition and I won some county competitions. But it got to the point of being too time consuming and too boring, all you're doing is memorizing openings and certain strategies for middle play and end game situations rather than playing. Having said that I really enjoy going through the old Master's games. If you'…

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Who plays chess?

#18

Post by aquateen »

hsmyers wrote: post #12

I've played tournament chess on and off since the mid-70's and as was pointed out elsewhere, to get good you need to devote a substantial amount of time to the game. Not that this is a bad thing, but you do have to ask yourself just how much time you have to devote to just how many things? I've managed to make a decent living from time to time as a chess programmer--- don't do the engines, but did do the interfaces.…

Sounds nice to work with chess as a programmer.

I remember about 10 years ago when I was too young to pay for an ICC subscription, I would continually use a two-week trial by changing the volume ID on my hard drive.

Re: Ask HN: Who plays chess?

#19

Post by cletus »

I used to play Chess when I was much younger and could beat pretty much everyone I knew by age 10-11. That's not saying an awful lot because I didn't know anyone particular good, and that was really the problem.

I lived in a town of about 10,000 at the time (and later in a town of 15-20,000 up until the end of high school) so didn't really have the opportunity to learn and get better. This was before the internet and playing a computer isn't quite the same thing.

It's something I'm a little disappointed about because I wish I'd had that opportunity by living somewhere bigger.

You learn from people who are better than you far more than those that are worse than you.

In university I met up with someone I'd gone to high school with (until he moved). He'd become something of a gun when it came to pool (eight ball). He used to practice 6 hours a day (I later learned) and won a junior state championship. He could beat pretty much any of us with his eyes closed. Once he beat someone when he was drunk only playing with one hand and won convincingly.

I used to play with him and actually got pretty good. By pretty good I mean I could take a game from him maybe 1 in 10-15. Against pretty much anyone else I did extremely well and even did well in the odd local comp (second place I think was my best).

That's what I mean about getting the opportunity to get better.

Re: Ask HN: Who plays chess?

#20

Post by slyall »

I played chess a seriously when I was at school but my family moved to a town without a decent club in last year at school so I stopped playing.

Started again around 2.5 years ago and I'm pretty serious. Trying to do 10-20 hours per week of training, seeing a coach for 2 hours/week and entering tournaments (I'm in the middle of one this weekend).

I don't play much online, just chess puzzles, books and playing against the computer ( The hard bit with computer chess these days is not "playing better than a grandmaster" but "playing like a nnnn rated human" ). At the level I'm at memorising openings isn't too big. perhaps 20 lines to a depth of a dozen moves is enough.

My rating is 1900 FIDE (although I'm probably 100 points lower in real life) which puts me in the top 100,000 players in the world or something like that. My medium term plans are to get a low level title (below grandmaster) in around 3-5 years. It's a plausible goal if I put in the hours.

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